In recent years, Instagram has become a go-to mobile app for every type of business owner. From small-scale business sectors to large enterprises, it seems that Instagram is becoming a favorite. The Instagram features are quite significant for the advertisement and marketing needs of brands and small-scale business owners. It offers wall posts, stories, IGTV videos, and live sessions, and all of these fit best for marketers to expand their prospects to display and advertise their products.
Interestingly, Instagram doesn’t discriminate. Whether you are an apparel brand or a software development company, you have the space to get your brand well-advertised. With some tactics and Instagram hacks, you can build a large following and engagement. I have gathered some essential Instagram marketing guides to get your business to grow and make your marketing horizon expand more.
1. Make a business account
The first step that you are required to do is to make a business account that most of you must have already done. For those who have still not, and to make you all realize, below are the benefits of making a business account on Instagram.
- A business account enables you to add contact information including phone number, email, and website address on your profile. It enables your audience to contact you directly.
- A business account enables you to know some important facts and information about your followers. It tells you about your post reach, website clicks, profile visits, and new followers for free. This helps you analyze your posts and stories’ performance.
- You can easily create InstagramAdswith a business account.
- When a business account reaches a milestone of 10,000 followers, Instagram enables a swipe-up feature for their stories to directly get them to the website.
2. Use Free Instagram Tools
We are all aware that Facebook and Instagram are some of the best free marketing platforms for business owners. They, however, offer a paid advertisement program to make things even better. But, you can stick to the free features of the app until you start making some revenue from your startup or small business.
Instagram offers many free tools in the app including posts on your feed, a free editing feature, trendy video filters, and slideshows for story ads. Make sure you market your product or service by using the right type of idea, message, images, content, and overall post. Make full use of the free Instagram features by using spot-on marketing ideas and campaigns.
3. Make The Best Use of Instagram Stories
It wouldn’t be wrong if I said that Instagram stories are the most common feature of this chic mobile app. They are short, effective, and time-bound. People usually watch stories to stay updated with the latest updates from their friends, family, and the following.
Moreover, stories are vital for such content that you don’t want to add permanently to your feed. Updates daily can be best shared on Instagram stories. GIFs, time-lapse videos, and boomerangs are popular story gear that are frequently used by marketers. If you want some stories to be added for more than a day, you can add them to story highlights so that they won’t disappear from the Instagram account.
4. Reach out to influencers
A popular way to grow on Instagram is getting recognition through famous Instagram celebrities and influencers. Those people have built a large audience following over time and influence a large public over social media platforms.
Influencers have a strong impact on users and a large crowd buys products that are recommended by the influencers. The influencers often provide their followers with unbiased opinions and reviews about certain products and services.
You can reach out to Instagram celebrities and ask them to give a review about the product to their followers. In many cases, you just have to send your product as a gist to an Instagram celebrity and request them to give a product review. Some popular and huge following accounts also offer paid promotions and reviews.
collaborating with influencers goes far afield since they play a major role in introducing your business and enhancing your brand’s awareness. Thus, you can stretch your customer base in this way.
5. Create Sponsored Ads
Well, if you have enough grown with organic marketing techniques and now looking ahead to fly with more audience, sponsored ads are a good option. Even if you haven’t gone far away in organic marketing, you can still use sponsored ads to jump a step ahead. However, you have to be smart enough to catch your audiences’ interest in captivating ads and content.
Sponsored ads target a custom audience that might be interested in your product or service. Instagram targets audiences based on demographics, interests, age, and other customer data and information. If you know the right target audience, you can target them with a specific age group and demographics by using Facebook Ads Manager.
I would say again to make sure you use enough engaging and captivating ad content while using sponsored ads. The content must be able to encourage your audience to click on the link and eventually follow your account. A wise approach is to use your best-performing post as sponsored ads.
6. Show Up with User-submitted Photos
When you get your first customer, ask them to give a review for your offered product or services. Use their photos and reviews as testimonials for your product marketing. Using user-submitted images is a common trend in Instagram business tactics.
User-submitted images build credibility and authenticity for your product and brand among your audience. This also helps in improving engagement for your Instagram account because when people see others using your product, they also get motivated to give it a try. You can also run contests, product giveaways, and meetups to engage your customers. However, always try and test things before you put them out whether on your feed or the story.
Instagram has conquered the marketing war on social media platforms and it can work wonders for your business too. It has become the most preferred platform for getting recognition around the world with over 800 million monthly users. I recommend you leverage Instagram features and tools to get a great start for your business.
